Ethanol Plant Coming to Wayne The Distillery Deal Seems All but Sure

By MIKE MORRISON

An ethanol distillery in southeastern Wayne County appears all but guaranteed.

A group of area investors, Atlantic Ethanol Inc., will build the plant on a 350-acre site near the Mount Pleasant community that is owned by the Wayne County Industrial Development Authority. Atlantic Ethanol has put down a nonrefundable $1 million deposit with Fagen Inc., the Minnesota company under contract to build the plant.

With 45 employees the plant will provide an economic boon for a county in need of industrial jobs and will substantially increase the tax base.

County Commission Chairman Franklin Smith said he already is hearing complaints from residents along Aiken Road, where the plant will be built, and expects more at 7 p.m. Monday at a County Commission meeting. Mickey Whittington, chairman of the Industrial Development Authority, and an Atlantic Ethanol representative will address residents’ concerns.

“They’re concerned about pollution, noise, odor and wastewater,” said Smith, who represents the Aiken Road area.

Smith, Whittington, and Wayne County Administrator Mike Deal were among a group from the county that recently visited a similar ethanol plant that Fagen Inc. built in Albert City, Iowa. Fagen is also building Georgia’s first ethanol distillery in Camilla.

Based on a tour of the plant, Smith said Aiken Road residents have nothing to worry about, except for the growth that is already occurring in the area.

“From what I’ve seen, none of those things are going to be a problem,” he said. “The plant we visited was clean, with very little odor.”

The plant also controlled noise and dust and there was “no fallout,” he said.

Smith said he did warn one woman who lives in the area there was no stopping growth. Some 200 new home sites in three new subdivisions already are being developed in Mount Pleasant. And the Industrial Development Authority has an option on 559 more acres adjacent to the ethanol plant site.u

“I told her that that end of the county is where all the growth is now,” Smith said. “Those people who went out there to be in the country are not going to be in the country very long.”

MOSTLY MIDWEST CORN

Georgia needs four plants, Whittington said, to meet the projected need of 400 million gallons of ethanol a year to meet federal emission standards. Adding cleaner-burning ethanol to gasoline reduces emissions.

The facility will cover 79 acres and will include a rail yard for the 80 carloads of corn that will arrive every other day from the Midwest. Corn will also be purchased from area farmers, but Midwestern farms yield about 200 bushels of corn an acre, while a Georgia farmer may get only 80. It takes four-and-a-half bushels of corn to make a gallon of ethanol, Whittington said.

Because of the difficulty of transporting ethanol, it is more profitable to ship the corn to a distillery close to where the ethanol will be sold, Whittington said. Ethanol made in Wayne County will go to blending plants in Jacksonville and Savannah to be mixed with gasoline, he said.

Some new automobiles already are set up to burn E85, a blend of 85 percent alcohol and 15 percent gasoline.

CONSTRUCTION START IN 2008

The Aiken Road site, Whittington said, is ideal because of its proximity to rail and highway transportation, the Port of Brunswick, water, natural gas and electricity. The company already has a state permit to withdraw a million gallons of water a day from the Floridan Aquifer.

Whittington said an investment of $210 million will be required to get the plant up and running. He expects construction to begin in 2008 and to take about a year.

“All the environmental impact and wetlands delineations are done,” Whittington said.

The project has raised the eyebrows of some environmental groups, including the Altamaha Riverkeeper. The plant is within 10 miles of the Altamaha. Whittington said no pollutants are produced, but higher concentrations of minerals naturally found in water from the aquifer will remain in water discharged after the distillation process. He said there will be no discharge into the river.

Solid waste – the remnants of the grain – will be sold as livestock feed.

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